


Captain

by ProgramasaurusRex



Category: Silicon Valley (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-17
Updated: 2016-09-17
Packaged: 2018-08-15 13:01:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 700
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8057392
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ProgramasaurusRex/pseuds/ProgramasaurusRex
Summary: Gilfoyle and Richard have a chat. Mid-3x10.





	Captain

**Author's Note:**

> Because I ship everyone.

It was the night before Laurie was planning to sell Pied Piper to Gavin Belson, and Richard was trying to drown himself in the pool.

He was such an idiot. He couldn't even pretend he had acted out of principles this time, because if he really had any principles he would have told Erlich the truth before embarrassing him in the meeting with the VCs. He couldn't even be an honest fool correctly.

Richard tried to hold his breath and float down to the bottom. Drowning was more difficult than he expected. His lungs seemed to want him to live. Ah well, he thought moodily, of course he'd fail at suicide, too.

From the corner of his eye he saw the tall shadow of Gilfoyle coming toward him.

"Evening," said Gilfoyle.

Richard's cheeks turned pink. Of course, Gilfoyle was here to lay into him. He'd let everybody at the company down, but no one more so than Gilfoyle, who lied effortlessly when he had to protect his own self interest, who strutted the left hand path with the confidence of a god, who never seemed to fail at anything worth succeeding at.

"Gilfoyle," he said, like a laptop on 4% battery.

"Pretty late for swimming, isn't it?" said Gilfoyle, and the words were soft, softer than he'd heard from his sardonic CTO in a long time. "Come on out of there."

Instinctively, Richard obeyed, swimming over to the edge of the pool and pulling himself out. Gilfoyle produced a towel, wrapped it around his shoulders, led him to a chair, and sat down beside him.

"Gilfoyle," said Richard, "I'm so sorry. I've done everything back to front since we started this whole thing. I mean if you'd been CEO you would have pulled off the sale, fixed the UI, and we'd all be drinking champagne and fluttering dollar bills right now."

"Richard," said Gilfoyle, "we never would have gotten this far under my leadership. You care about people. You believe in people."

"Well, this time, I didn't," said Richard. "You and Dinesh told me what I needed to do to fix the product and I ignored you. Dinesh's video chat app was brilliant. It took freaking Bighead to notice that. Bighead, and you, and Tara, and everyone else except the guy who was supposed to be in charge. I was so selfish I let my pride in my product blind me into thinking it was just everybody else who was wrong. But you ... you notice everything, Gilfoyle. Whenever Jared or Dinesh is stressed about something you just instantly know."

"Yeah," said Gilfoyle. "I sense when people are upset. But that's it. I don't know the words to make it better. I usually just say something insulting. Like I'm probably going to do to you right now." He shrugged. "Kind of a useless superpower."

"Why aren't you angry?" said Richard. "You have every right to be angry about this."

Gilfoyle sighed. "What's the point? You know what you did, and you admitted it. Also, you're about to be stripped of the authority I used to resent you for."

"Yeah," said Richard. "I'll be Gavin's code monkey and you'll have all the recruiters fighting over you again."

"You really think that?" said Gilfoyle. He smiled sadly. "I've threatened to leave a few times, but I never actually have, have I?"

"But you hate Hooli, and 'artless commerce', and all that," said Richard.

"I'm not sure it would be artless commerce," said Gilfoyle. "Gavin's a pretty smart guy, and he knows we're the best engineers in the valley. Maybe he'll leave us alone to run things."

"You're still saying 'we' and 'us'," Richard pointed out incredulously. "Why? Why would you stick with me after I've led you through so many months of bullshit and failure?"

It was at this point that Gilfoyle swooped down and kissed him.

"Because," he said, "I've wanted to do that for three years."

Richard looked up at him, dazed. Neither one said anything for a moment.

His entire body shaking, Gilfoyle rose from his seat and walked to the patio door. When he got there, he turned back toward Richard and saluted.

"Captain," he said, before disappearing inside.


End file.
